The regional and state association presidents of the German Football Association have accepted an apology from DFB Vice President Hermann Winkler after his controversial Instagram post on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Hermann Winkler apologized expressly and, from my point of view, extremely emotionally,” said DFB Vice President Ronny Zimmermann after the meeting of the German Press Agency: “This apology was accepted from the point of view of the conference. Everyone agreed on that.”
“Closed for us”
Whether Winkler still has to fear consequences is an open question. “For us, the topic is closed. I don’t know whether anyone else will put it on the agenda in other committees,” said Zimmermann in Cologne.
However, the regional and state association presidents also agreed on the assessment. “Everyone described their personal impressions, which were largely identical,” said Zimmermann: “Namely that this post is simply unacceptable and crosses a red line. There were no two opinions.”
Annoyingly added to Facebook
But Winkler “clearly stated that it was a huge mistake and that he doesn’t feel like he belongs to the corner he’s now being pushed into and would never do anything like that again,” said Zimmermann: “That he’s overpowered in this situation because of his socialization became”. Former CDU politician Winkler described Selenskyj as a “former Ukrainian actor” in an Instagram post on Sunday, without naming the Ukrainian president.
On Monday, the president of the Northeast German Football Association announced via Facebook that he would not write the entry again. He apologized for “the irritation caused” and wrote that he condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression. However, he does not personally agree with everything Zelenskyj does.
apology accepted
However, Winkler did not solve the problem with this apology. Christos Katzidis, President of the Mittelrhein Association, said in the run-up to the meeting that he found the post in question “very strange because it doesn’t seem like an honest apology to me.”
According to Zimmermann, this was also discussed in detail on Wednesday. “If he had phrased it the way he did today, perhaps some confusion would have been avoided earlier,” he said: “But we all know that a personal apology is different than a written one on social media. You can’t be emotional there like that bring it across. He did that today and also responded to questions. I actually found it totally honest. And it’s not easy to open up like that in a group.”
